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Campus Uncommons: Sylvia Muñoz

Learn more about the great people who make Elon a special place.

By Gabriela Szewcow ’13

Sylvia Muñoz has been a part of El Centro de Español since the very beginning. And the very beginning took place in the home of President Emeritus J. Fred Young, where Muñoz, a native of Costa Rica, lived while she served as a visiting international faculty member in the Alamance-Burlington schools.

“I started coming to Elon a couple of afternoons to teach him Spanish and a few of the trustees as well,” she recalls. “That’s when we started talking about the idea of El Centro.”

It was an unorthodox idea: to establish a program at Elon where students, faculty and staff could learn conversational Spanish and important aspects of Hispanic culture outside the classroom walls. Yet in its 15 years, what started as a few conversation classes held on the first floor of Moseley Center has grown into much more than a “center” -– it’s a community that serves more than 100 faculty, staff and students each semester and supports initiatives such as Hispanic Heritage Week, holiday observances and much more.

“It’s so great to see students that started with us their first year have continued for four years and can now communicate. To me, that’s very fulfilling,” Muñoz says. “Being at Elon makes it easier to be away from home in Costa Rica.”